Property Litigation Solicitor for lease forfeiture & FTT

GreyLedger

Hi everyone,

I’m in a bit of a nightmare situation and need recommendations for a really good Property Litigation Solicitor. I need someone who knows exactly what they are doing with leasehold disputes, setting aside default CCJs (due to defective service), and taking freeholders to the First-tier Tribunal (FTT). legal expertise is definitely my top priority.

Here’s what’s happened:

• I own a leasehold flat, but I currently live abroad. I have a dedicated UK correspondence address where all my official post is supposed to go.
• The managing agent for the freeholder actually used to be my letting agent for a decade. We had a falling out and I moved to a new agent. They know the flat is tenanted, and they definitely have my correct UK correspondence address on file.
• Despite this, they deliberately sent all the legal notices and a court claim form to the tenanted flat instead of my correspondence address.
• Because of this, I had absolutely no idea they had taken me to court. They managed to get a default CCJ behind my back, which then escalated to a Section 146 Notice and an Order for Possession (forfeiture).
• I actually have been paying my service charges to this exact managing agent the whole time and can be proven with bank statement and emails!
• To stop the bailiffs from literally taking the flat today, I had to do an emergency bank transfer of over £14,700 to their extremely aggressive solicitors. I made it absolutely clear in writing that this was paid strictly under protest just to stop the eviction.
• Out of that £14,700 ransom, nearly £9,000 is purely the law firm's legal fees.

Now that the flat is legally safe and the money is paid under protest,I need a solicitor to apply to set the default CCJ aside (based on defective service and the fact no arrears are owed), and then drag them to the FTT to challenge these ridiculous Section 146 costs so I can hopefully get my money back maybe.

Any recommendations or advice on next steps would be hugely appreciated!

Cheers in advance.

anselld

Don't have a recommendation Im afraid but I am wondering how the Landlord side reconcile the amounts you say you have actually paid? Do they acknowledge receipt or have they somehow lost them, or were the amounts incorrect or what? It just seems strange that circa £5000 arrears can build up if you were paying charges. Were the charges notified to the correct address?

GreyLedger

To answer your question about how the arrears reached £5k, they didn't. I actually have an account statement straight from the managing agent dated August 2025, and the closing balance at the very bottom is exactly £1,486.00. I've got all my bank statements showing I've been making regular payments right up to that point, every single one fully referenced, and nothing ever bounced back. So where they magically pulled that £5k arrears figure from to take me to court is a complete mystery.

My best guess is they'll try to claim I've been paying into an 'old' account or something. But since we had a massive fallout and I changed agents, there's a lot of bad blood. I never had a single issue paying their fees before that happened.

To answer your last question, no, they didn't use the right address. They actually have my official UK correspondence address on file, but they deliberately chose to send all the bills and court papers straight to the tenanted flat instead. They are definitely abusing the fact that I don't live in the UK to pull a fast one and pretend I haven't been paying

eddddy

I don't have a recommendation for a solicitor…

… but if you're going to employ a solicitor maybe you should discuss the cost at the outset

The general rule for tribunal cases is that the winner doesn't get their legal (and other) costs paid by the loser. So you need to make sure you don't end up paying £10k in legal fees, in order to win a repayment of £9k.

The theory is that tribunals are less formal than courts and should allow "amateurs" to present cases without the help of a solicitor.

GreyLedger said

To answer your last question, no, they didn't use the right address. They actually have my official UK correspondence address on file, but they deliberately chose to send all the bills and court papers straight to the tenanted flat instead.

The "letter of the law" is that notices (including service charge demands) must be sent to the leasehold flat address, unless you request in writing for them to be sent to another address.

Are you saying

• 1) that you specifically put a request in writing for notices to be sent to your correspondence address?

or

• 2) that you didn't specifically put that request in writing, but the managing agent knew about your correspondence address for other reasons?

If it's option 1, I'd guess you have a very strong case. If it's option 2, it's probably down to a decision by the tribunal judge - was it "reasonable" for the managing agent not to attempt to contact you at any point at your correspondence address?